The View From Tehran on the Newly Brokered U.S.-Israel-Iran "Ceasefire"

As of this moment, Iran, Israel, and the U.S. have all stated that a ceasefire agreement is now in effect, following 12 days of heavy Israeli bombing across Iran that killed hundreds of people, a majority of them civilians. Iran conducted retaliatory strikes against Israel, exposing the fallibility of the much hyped Iron Dome missile defense system. The U.S. conducted its own bombing of Iran as well, including the use of some 14 30,000 pound bombs on Iranian nuclear sites. On Monday, Iran launched a series of missiles at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the headquarters of U.S. Central Command and the principal U.S. base in the Middle East.

As the world waited to see how the U.S. would respond to these strikes, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that a ceasefire agreement had been reached. For several hours overnight, neither Israel nor Iran confirmed this was true. Then, on Tuesday morning, both sides affirmed they had agreed to a deal brokered by the U.S. and Qatar, though the situation remains uncertain and tense.

This morning, President Donald Trump spoke to reporters on the White House lawn and expressed anger at both Iran and Israel for what he said were attacks that occurred after the ceasefire was announced. But Trump emphasized that he was mostly angry with Israel, at one point, even using an expletive. “Israel, as soon as we made the deal, they came out and they dropped a load of bombs, the likes of which I’ve never seen before, the biggest load that we’ve seen,” he said. While he criticized both Israel and Iran, he repeatedly said that he was “really unhappy” with Israel. “We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.”

Joining me from Tehran, Iran is Dr. Foad Izadi, Associate Professor in the Faculty of World Studies at the University of Tehran, to discuss the tentative ceasefire, what it might mean for the future of Iran’s nuclear program, and the broader impact of Israel’s U.S.-facilitated wars over the past 20 months.